Oscar night kicked off with a Best Supporting Actor win for Christoph Waltz, an Austrian actor who utterly embodied evil as “Colonel Hans Landa” in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.  Although Waltz’s win was hands down the most expected victory of the night, it was also the most deserved.  That makes three years in a row that a portrayal of a villain character has won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (the previous two being Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight and Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men).  Similarly, the rest of the acting wins came as anticipated.  Jeff Bridges, or “The Dude” as I like to call him, finally received the Best Actor Oscar that he has so long deserved.  Sandra Bullock (Best Actress for The Blind Side) won for Best Liked Actress Outside of a Motion Picture.  Monique also took home a Supporting Actress statuette for her performance in Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire.  She assuredly delivered the finest acceptance speech of the night, thanking the Academy for proving that an acting Oscar is won for the performance and not the politics.  If only she were right…but the Academy just had to give Sandy her lifetime achievement award.

As projected, the rest of the night was dominated by Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker, which took home a total of six Academy Awards.  Despite its predictable wins, The Hurt Locker deserved every award it took home.  What a bold, amazing film.  Included in the six wins for The Hurt Locker were Best Picture and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow, the first directing Oscar given to a woman in 83 years of Academy history.  Ms. Bigelow literally looked like she was about to pass out on stage.  You could see her shaking.

Unfortunately, the Oscar show itself was a near-disaster due to its dreadful hosts and entertainment bits.  I have never been a fan of Steve Martin.  The guy just isn’t that funny.  However, I am a big fan of Alec Baldwin; therefore, I figured he would be able to carry Martin through the show.  Wrong.  Martin and even Baldwin himself phoned-in every line they were given.  Their delivery felt forced.  Not only were the hosts bland but the performance numbers were awful as well.  That interpretive dance during The Hurt Locker score was just…strange.  I doubt that the performers intended for me to laugh at them.  Additionally, what happened to the live performances of the Best Original Song nominees?  I would have loved to see Ryan Bingham perform “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart.  Lastly, why was it necessary to change “and the Academy Award goes to” into “and the winner is?”  I’m not angry about it.  The change isn’t a big deal.  I just don’t understand how the new phrasing is supposed to have any sort of novel effect on the Oscar audience.  What exactly was the point of breaking 82 years of tradition for a single phrase?

There were only two creative bits of the show that worked…sort of.  The first bit was the stars’ personal tributes to their fellow acting colleagues among the Best Actor and Actress nominees.  I personally enjoyed Colin Farrell’s tribute to Jeremy Renner.  It was humorous, honest and sincere.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t help but feel that the actor tributes felt like a frustrating delay of the inevitable.  The nominees themselves knew full well whose names were going to be pulled from the envelope.  We might as well have been given a drum roll.  The second bit that was almost able to peel my eyelids open was Ben Stiller’s Avatar costume stunt.  I rarely find Stiller funny.  I have always believed that Stiller is simply lucky to be in funny movies and to be surrounded by funny actors.  He absolutely proved me wrong on Oscar night.  Stiller’s act was hilarious.  However, I then remembered that Sacha Baron Cohen was originally supposed to be a part of that skit and I realized how much better it still could have been.  That was yet another failure.

Every beat of the 2010 Oscar ceremony suffered some form of failure.  While planning out Oscar night, the Oscar broadcast producers were certainly aware that the statues would be handed to the expected winners.  Nearly every awards precursor had set the Oscar victors in stone.  No shockers were on the horizon.   Therefore, Oscar producers should have asked themselves, how else can we surprise our audience?  But when the sole surprise of the night comes in the form of an acceptance speech that is irritatingly sabotaged Kanye style, it’s clear that the value of surprise did not even occur to the Oscar broadcast producers.